Saturday, January 24, 2015
By Ed Runyan
YOUNGSTOWN
A 30-page affidavit filed in Youngstown federal court by a local FBI agent lays out a fraud he says a Howland gas-station owner carried out in 2012 to defraud an Illinois bank out of $2.5 million.
Shaukat M. Sindhu, 54, of Torrey Pines Street Northeast, just north of Avalon Lakes Golf Course, was ordered into federal custody without bond by Magistrate George Limbert on Tuesday while a federal grand jury considers charges.
Sindhu has been owner and operator of gas stations throughout the Mahoning Valley since 2007, including ones on Bear’s Den Road in Youngstown, South State Street in Girard, West Market Street in Warren, Vienna Avenue in Niles, Main Street in New Middletown and Akron-Canfield Road in Ellsworth.
A Chicago man, Tahir Iqbal, also was arrested recently and appeared in federal court in the case but was released from federal custody after posting $20,000 bond.
The affidavit says Sindhu misled First Midwest Bank in Itasca, Ill., and Consumer’s National Bank in Minerva, Ohio, in 2012 by creating false identities that he used to purchase the assets of some of his 12 gas stations and other holdings after he failed to make loan payments to First Midwest.
The affidavit describes a complex arrangement in which at least eight relatives and friends of Sindhu’s, including his sister in Pakistan and two of his children served as owner, president or registered agent for the companies that operated his business interests. The government says Sindhu used many “straw” names while operating the companies himself and still does.
Sindhu purchased 12 Northeast Ohio gas stations in 2006 with a $5.9 million bank loan. He is believed to have purchased the 5,374-square-foot Torrey Pines residence for $600,000 in October 2010. He had addresses in Barrington, Ill., and Willow Drive near Howland High School in 2009, according to Trumbull County Common Pleas Court documents.
After First Midwest filed foreclosures in the common pleas courts in Mahoning and Trumbull counties against S&K Petroleum and Bismilla Group in February 2012 related to Sindhu’s gas stations and properties, Sindhu created a company called Al-Hafiz Investments in June 2012 to buy some of his own companies, the affidavit says.
Mahmood Khan was named as president of Al Hafiz, but the address for Khan is that of Iqbal in Chicago, and Sindhu uses his address on Torrey Pines as the address for El Hafiz. Further, the emails and phone number associated with the company belong to Sindhu, the affidavit says.
The government executed a search warrant on the Torrey Pines residence earlier this month and interviewed Sindhu regarding the allegations Oct. 29, 2013. He was arrested Jan. 14.
The affidavit says Sindhu pretended to be two non-existent individuals to carry out a fraud that caused First Midwest to reduce the principal owed on Sindhu’s loans by $2.5 million.
Agents used subpoenas to identify Sindhu as the real writer of various emails and used surveillance to identify Sindhu as the occupant of the Torrey Pines residence, the affidavit says.
Magistrate Limbert ordered that Sindhu not be permitted to make bond because of the weight of evidence against Khan, because he has “significant ties to countries with no extradition treaties,” has more than one Social Security number, has had convictions for battery and resisting arrest and threatened to kill the family members of a “cooperating witness in this case.”